Two Paradigmatic
Catalogues in Homer

Benjamin G. Sammons (Pennsylvania State University)

In this paper I will consider two passages in Homer which I term “paradigmatic catalogues.” The first of these is the speech of Dione in the Iliad, where she tells Aphrodite of three occasions on which gods have been physically harmed by mortals, just as Aphrodite herself has just been harmed by Diomedes (Il. 5.381-402). The second is the speech of Kalypso in the Odyssey, where she tells Hermes of three occasions on which the gods have begrudged a goddess's love for a mortal man (Od. 5.121-136), including herself as the last example. These have been noticed as a possible conventional device [cf. Oehler (1925) 31, Kühlmann (1973) 69-71, Scodel (2002) 145 & Alden (2000) 126, from whom I take the term “paradigmatic catalogue”], but they have not been much studied in context. In my talk I will first call attention to the fact that while paradigmatic tales are often used rhetorically in Homer, these are the only examples in which more than one such tale is assembled in a list, though the latter technique is common enough in the later poetic tradition, e.g. in Attic tragedy [see A. Cho. 585, Soph. Ant. 944ff.], and eventually ubiquitous [in Ovid; see Bernhardt (1986) 13]. I will then investigate why this exceptional procedure is used in these two places. My argument will be based on the numerous similarities between the two passages: In both cases the speaker is a goddess speaking to another god; in both cases the speech concerns the relationship between mortal and immortals, and in particular the blurring of the boundary between them; in both cases the stories are being told because they have a clear paradigmatic relevance to Homer's narrative. My thesis is that through these catalogues, each deployed relatively early in its respective poem, Homer positions himself within the oral tradition to which he belongs. Yet he does this in an ambiguous and playful manner, and the catalogues cannot be read simply as “footnotes” to his own story. This will be seen in the fact that he places them into the mouths of characters with their own rhetorical aims; and in the significant ways in which Homer's own story departs, both in content and theme, from the historical pattern adduced by the speaker.

Bibliography

Alden, Maureen (2000). Homer Beside Himself: Para-Narratives in the Iliad. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bernhardt, Ursula (1984). Die Funktion der Kataloge in Ovids Exilpoesie. Altertumswissenschaftliche Texte und Studien 15. Hildesheim: Olms.

Kühlmann, Wilhelm (1973). Katalog und Erzählung. Diss., Freiburg.

Oehler, Robert (1925). Mythologische Exempla in der älteren griechischen Dichtung. Diss., Basel.

Scodel, Ruth (2002). Listening to Homer: Tradition, Narrative, and Audience. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.